Apr

01

…

writing

(via)

Here is the typical method of publishing: research, research, research, write, edit, write, edit, write, edit, publish, full stop.

Here is the blog version: research/write/edit, publish, research/write/edit, publish, research/write/edit, publish, ad infinitum.

Over the last few months I’ve written a number of posts that have been published quickly upon finishing. Some I wrote over the course of a week, some in a few hours. Some contain higher volumes of outside content, some contain no links at all. Some I read numerous and varied sources to formulate, some came strictly from my own thoughts.

My writing and reading have been distributed over the course of months, as opposed to compartmentalizing them neatly into beginning – middle – end. Because this is a blog, it would make no sense to do all of my research at the start of the project, spend a month or two writing and editing, and then publish all of the posts in rapid succession at the end. That’s just not how the medium works.

Too, there are expectations of readers here that are different from an academic paper. A blog is a place from which people expect consistent content production. Whether that consistency is daily, weekly, monthly, or something more loosely defined, what is not expected is a one-shot deal, a blog that is written all at once and never updated again. Constant content (say that three times fast), not final product, is the game here.

What that also means, in regards to a project that must be turned in, is that there exists an ellipsis at the end of my thesis – a place where it “ends,” except, not really.

I am wrapping this project up because I have to – because deadlines exist - not because it is ending. It might be more appropriate to say that I’m “wrapping it up.” My future work in this space and my future investigation of / participation in the Digital Humanities will not be classified under a CRN number, but it will exist, and in the very same format as my project thus far. This is yet another thing that the muddling of publishing models achieves: a tension in value status of “complete” vs. “ongoing.”

When we complete undergraduate papers, they get turned in, graded, and handed back. They exist to be read by one and only one person: our professor. If we’re working on an especially large project, perhaps other professors or advisors will read them. Maybe if we’re proud of something we’ll send it to a friend or family member. That gives us a grand total audience count of, what? Six? Maybe eight, if we’re ambitious? I’d say that’s generous, even for our bigger papers. The more standard audience count is exactly 1, plus whatever filing cabinet or trash bin they end up in once the semester is over.

This blog, in contrast, will likely (and hopefully) be read by many people, over many years. Its digital form will last as long as I want it to, and its content will show up in any number of different Google searches or ping-backs on other sites. The ellipsis at the end of my thesis and its digital nature ensure that five or ten years from now, someone may read this very entry. Or they may read future entries, and scroll through the archives to see what I’ve said in the past. The point is that blogs are not linear or constrained to a certain timeline and a certain audience, at least in comparison to academic publications.

Which leaves me wondering: what’s the value in that?

What I mean specifically is: to what end is the ellipsis at the end of my project a  valuable part of my project? What is the value of continued and unaffiliated exploration after a grade has been given? In most cases of undergraduate work, our research ends when our classes end. We put things down and forget about them – publish, full stop. But when we explore new arenas of publishing models, ones that a) are read by people outside of our classroom, and b) lend themselves to continued production, our work never really ends. It shouldn’t, at least, if we’re committed to the form.

So the ellipsis dangles. It begs of me: “You’re not finished. You can’t be.” And I’m glad it’s there, because I’m pretty sure I’ll have plenty more to say…

Posted by | 0 comments
Feb

22

you got your digital in my traditional!

writing

I don’t think I’ve mentioned explicitly that this blog, in its current form, is the substance of my senior thesis project.

Yes, I’m blogging the cumulative work of my undergraduate career.

If that seems a little weird to you, too, then you may be a traditional scholar, like I’ve been.

When I thought “senior thesis” in the past, I thought: 30-40 page paper. I thought: research, write, edit, write, edit, (etc), submit. I thought of one form of writing and one form of publishing only. Traditional or bust, amirite?

Except, no. My project is on Digital Humanities, and if I’m going to be investigating a highly digital, highly experimental, emergent field of study, well then I better be digital and experimental and emergent myself. My background, however, is not in this area. My degree, when I graduate this spring (gulp!), will be in English Language, Literature, and Writing from what is arguably a pretty traditional English program. Branching out from what I’m used to has been exciting, and complicated, and one hell of a learning experience.

I didn’t know it would happen in exactly this way, but I am, as we speak, restructuring my own ideas about what it means to do academic work.

I’ll tell you a little secret: I don’t know what I’m doing. You’re not supposed to admit this in Academia, I don’t think. At least, not all out in the open where anyone can hear you. But I’m pretty sure it’s true more often, and for more of us, than we would have each other believe. And I don’t think it’s a bad thing. In fact, not knowing what I’m doing is a big part of the reason I chose to do this project in this particular way from the very beginning. I like things that are new, that are experimental. I like to look underneath rocks and see what I can do with whatever I happen to find. I like to explore.

However. Liking =/= easy.

It’s tricky, this opening up of my assumptions and expectations of scholarship. There are lots of questions that I don’t have answers for. Not fully formed answers, at least.

To wit: how do I measure what I am doing? This is not a traditional paper or project, so what is it supposed to look like? Is there a certain post count that is equivalent to 40 pages of linear argument? Do I count words? Paragraphs? Do I set a goal for a certain number of posts, and when I’ve reached that, I’m done? Do I copy and paste my posts into Word to keep track of length? When do I stop? How do I turn it in? Etc.?

To all of these: yes, no, and maybe, we’ll see. Yes, there are parameters. I couldn’t write three posts and call it a day. There are equivalency expectations put forth by the Honors College, and for good reason. A cumulative project has to have some degree of substance to be worth a damn, after all.

But, no, the measurements are not the same. First of all, plugging everything into word and calling it good when I reach 35 pages just wouldn’t fit in with the point of this project. It also wouldn’t take into account the different aspects of digital writing that traditional papers don’t incorporate. For instance: If I link to, say, 25 outside sources (or 60, or 200), and my readers follow those links, what then? Does that hold the same value as a reader looking up a cited reference in a bibliography? I don’t think so. For one thing, the ease of access to outside sources is sure to change the reading experience. A person could read half of my blog post, follow a link, be gone for half an hour, and come back to read the rest. Authorship and citation are interwoven with one another here on the Interwebs. What does that mean for the substance of my writing?

Then, too, is the publishing method. These posts are not edited by anyone but me. They don’t get reviewed by one or two or five people before I put them out into the blogoverse. With a traditional thesis, there are layers of writing and editing that happen by not only the author, but their advisor(s). Of course, I generally don’t hit “publish” as soon as I’m done writing; I let posts sit for hours or days, and re-read/edit them before I make them public. But no one else is responsible for the quality of my work except for myself, which means that my thesis will never be “polished” in the same way that a traditional paper would be, for the simple fact that there is only one of me.

The most fascinating question that I have yet to answer is that of the end point. This is a blog. More importantly, it’s a blog that I created for purposes other than my thesis. Which is to say, this project is not self-contained. When the time comes that I am “done” with my thesis work, I will still be writing here. There’s a good chance that I will still be writing here about the same subjects that I am writing about currently. I have no intention of abandoning the field of Digital Humanities and the question of traditional-meets-digital once I’m finished with my undergraduate degree. How do I incorporate the ongoing and never-quite-finished aspect of my work into something that I must turn in at the end of the semester?

The more I think and read and write, the more questions arise. None of this is simple, or easy. It’s kind of messy, it’s a little strange, and it’s certainly not going to be resolved in this one post. But these are questions that are important, not only to me, but to the myriad of students and scholars out there who will turn to digital creation more and more as time goes on. It may not be traditional, but it sure is fascinating.

(word count: 1,005 – 3 pages, double spaced)

Posted by | 0 comments
Jan

16

intentional consumption

writing

This is a photograph of my television. You may notice the complete lack of a television in the photograph, and that’s because it doesn’t actually exist. Yes, that’s right: I don’t own a tv.

It’s not that I didn’t plan on owning a tv, it’s just that when I moved to my new place, I never got around to getting one. The longer I go without it, the less aware I am of a) it’s absence, and b) my status as a cultural minority in this regard. Being sans television in today’s world is just kind of weird, you know? And yet, most of the time I don’t think about it at all. Given my intense love of Bravo marathons, I did not expect this to happen. Don’t get me wrong – the first couple of weeks were awkward. I spent them online reading television reviews and trying to find the best deal I could, but after a while my desire started to fade. It would be nice to watch movies on a screen larger than my computer, or to play the Wii that is currently being used as a dust holder, but the cost in both time and money to get one just hasn’t been worth it yet. And, quite frankly, I just don’t miss it much.

A few days ago I started reading Clay Shirky‘s newest book Cognitive Surplus. The basic premise of the first chapter is this: 1) we as a society have a lot of time on our hands, 2) in the past we’ve mostly used it watching cable, 3) times are a-changin’.

Shirky’s theories got me thinking a lot about my own media consumption, especially given my newfound tv-free environment. Without a tv, my consumption of programming designed for tv has become intentional in a way that it never was before. If I want to watch a show, I have to turn on my computer, go to the network site or log onto Netflix, find the specific program, and wait for it to buffer (this last bit may seem like a petty addition, but I really hate waiting for things to buffer – payshuntz: i haz none). These steps, on their own, don’t take much time or effort, but they take enough time and effort that I think before I do them. Gone are they days of hitting “on” and vegging out.

This shift from passive watching to intentional watching is in keeping with the rest of my media consumption, and yet it was a surprise to discover how incongruous the old way really was. When I read books and blogs, surf the Intertubes, listen to the radio, etc., it’s always with a specific purpose in mind. I don’t just read whatever book happens to be closest to me, or log onto whatever website pops up first; the choices I make are deliberate in a way that my television watching was not. I had never before given it much thought, but the hours I spent on tv shows in the past were out of line with the way I live the rest of my life. It was often a relief to veg out, but I’ve learned that I don’t need it in the way that I thought I did. I was raised by society to believe that passive television consumption was entirely natural (and, arguably, necessary), and have come to find out that this simply isn’t true.

So what am I doing instead? It’s a question that gives me a pause, because the first answer that popped into my head was “I don’t know.” The real answer, of course, is: a little bit of everything else. I would have expected that not having a tv would be more of a dramatic change than it actually is. The truth is, it’s just not that big of a deal. I read, I write, I go to coffee with friends, I listen to music, I clean my house, I play with my cats, etc. All things I’ve always done. (And yes, sometimes I turn on my computer, log onto Netflix, find a show, and sit through the dreaded buffering.) I think part of the reason that it’s not such a big deal is precisely because it’s more in keeping with the rest of my media intake. It’s a shift from something that I didn’t even know was unnatural, to a way of interacting that makes far more sense for my lifestyle. Intentionality re: tv just fits.

Posted by | 2 comments
May

20

do or do not, or: just do it!

writing

There’s a time of the year for us students (and I imagine some professors, too) that I like to call the Anti-Motivation. It starts immediately after your last final, and generally stays a few weeks. It is exactly what it sounds like – a period of time with an almost negative capacity for usefulness.

I don’t know about you, but when it comes to school, I’m all-in. For eight months out of the year my brain is in hyper-drive, and I’m doing whatever it takes to get my work done. It feels great to be productive, but the flip side is that when the A-M comes, it hits hard. All of a sudden, I find myself with an abundance of time and no deadlines in sight. It’s amazing how quickly I can go from spending an entire day writing a paper to spending an entire day watching reruns of Real Housewives of Wherever. It feels good to relax, to unwind, to decompress from the stress of constant pressure. But there’s some danger in it, too.

If you let it, the A-M can last indefinitely. It will suck you in just as quickly as you can say “CSI marathon,” and it will refuse to let go. For some, I’m sure a summer-long period of Nothing is exactly what you need. For me, it sounds like torture. I’m at my best when I’ve got a lot going on. I’m a productivity junky, y’all. And so although I do need a good few weeks of A-M to shift my mindset out of academia, anything longer than that feels, well, yucky. The funny part is, as yucky as I know it feels, the allure to stay there is often strong. I really, really like HGTV. And since it’s a whole damn channel, it’s on all the time. But, unfortunately, watching other people remodel their bathrooms does not actually translate to a remodeled bathroom of my own.

All this is just to say I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox* that I’m climbing my way out of this year’s A-M as we speak. Summer productivity has meant something different every year. Last year, I spent four months researching, buying, moving into, and setting up my first home. The year before that was filled with bike rides and camping trips and good books. This year, blogging. And bike riding, camping, reading, and home improving, too. Oh, and Daria. Because watching a whole series of cartoons in one sitting totally counts as productive when it’s Daria. That wasn’t sarcasm, y’all, it’s just plain fact.

Awesome 90′s television aside, I have found that the best way to combat the Anti-Motivation is to just do. It’s a common misconception, with myself at least, that motivation is a feeling. “I don’t feel motivated,” she said. Hogwash! The root of the word motivation is motive, which is the thing behind the action. It’s the reason we do what we do.  Sometimes, I do what I do because I feel like doing it. But often, it’s something else. My house, for instance, does not clean itself. And although that’s a cliché most often identified with parents yelling at their kids, it’s also sadly true. I am motivated to clean my house not because I always want to spend time cleaning, but because I really like having a clean home.

And so I must remind myself, when I’m fighting to get out from underneath another year’s wicked A-M, that feelings just aren’t facts. That as much as I like couching, I like writing more. That the pay-off from blogging (or biking, or cleaning), is about a billion times more satisfying than whatever drama the ladies of Orange County or New York have going on this week. That doing feels better than not doing.

That Yoda and Nike were totally on to something.

———————————————————————————————————————————–

* Fifty Internet Points for catching the reference!

Posted by | 1 comments
© Copyright Erin Stratos - Theme by Pexeto